"I suppose you don't, and I shrink from making it more clear to you. Do you know what "The Song of Lost Endeavor" means? Have you sung it—in your heart?"
Her voice had dropped almost to a whisper, and her arm, apparently of its own volition, had found its way to my neck.
"I don't know that I do," I admitted, "except in a vague way. I suppose it has to do with failure, with knowing one's self to be a failure——"
"That's it—and I know. . . . I have tried, and failed."
"Jean!"
"I thought our promise—my promise—would bind me. . . . It didn't. It won't. It can't." She withdrew her arm, then quickly seized both my hands in hers.
"Oh, my boy, my friend, my chum!" she exclaimed, and little crystal wells gathered between her eyelids as she spoke. "How can I hurt you so! But nothing else would be honest. I have tried and failed. I lost my temper with you to-day, and once before, over Spoof. You were playing jokes on him—making him the butt of your humor—your idea of humor——"
"I promise you nothing of that kind will ever happen again, dear; I promise it, I swear it!"
"But that doesn't help, any. Don't you see, it's not that I care—so much—about the joke—on anybody—but because I love Spoof."
I hope I took the blow like a gentleman. I had the advantage of being somewhat prepared for it.